I can't believe I am in McDonald's. There is nothing here I could order that wouldn't gross me out. I often get sick, literally, from eating their foods. I don't know what they put in there that makes me feel sick.
I am here. In the middle of the dark canopy called Night, in this forlorn forest called Chinatown, inside this cave of the ultimate bad American food that, oddly, attracts all sorts of foreign tourists (most unlikely French). I am listening to some catchy 90's music. Or is it the 2000's? What do you call songs that came out between 2000 and 2010? Not to mention those that are coming out now.... No one thought of it?
I am here because I am waiting for a woman. But I am not thinking too much about her, except that one moment wondering if she is really coming out to dance. Without much effort, she convinced me to go dancing with her tonight, here, in this dark and forlorn forest of faded Chinese signs. I danced last night, I will be dancing the next two nights. What have I become?
I have lost my head, that's what happened. I am in a McDonalds, waiting for the princess to descend in her steel and noisy chariot so I can dance a tanda or two with her. I have truly lost my head. I am reading this Russian novel by a very famous writer from the Soviet times, a searing critique of the Soviet society. Naturally, she inspired me to read this book. Anyway, one of the scenes involved a man losing his head, though he didn't die; in fact, the head was still talking, quite shocked that it had been dislodged from the body that just slumped against the wall. The head was put back but the person was no longer "whole", complaining bitterly and painfully that the head was still not fully reconnected to the body.
My head is disconnected from my body. My body needs sleep. My head needs sleep. But the dictator that is now disconnected from the governed nation of me decides that this woman is worth it, decides from having read the jumbled telegraph from the heart that it is important to see this woman, even for a little bit.
What does a man do for a woman? Lose his head.
But while waiting here, I don't think much about the pianist rumbling down underground from the highest point of the island I am sitting on. I am trying to connect to the forest around me. My head and my body might be disconnected, but this couple, head and body, still wants to be connected to the surrounding.
A man in a burgundy buttoned-up shirt sits nearly perfectly still with his face glued to the laptop, whose screen light illuminates his face with different kinds of light. It is as if his face, twisted a little from the fingers that it is resting on, is a canvass for the different paintings coming out of the screen. Outside, just outside the door, over the door, a huge sign, the infamous Golden Arch, recently given a facelift, glows in the dark forest. Every now and then trucks roam by one of the busiest arteries of the city, Canal Street. People are coming and leaving the Manhattan Bridge, and most are coming and leaving the Holland Tunnel at the other end of this lower section of an island shaped by Nature but just as much by human beings. Its natural forests long replaced by concrete and human beings, their exuberance as well as excrement.
I am not just waiting for a woman who just broke up with me yesterday before I clarified some misunderstanding that brought her back. I am waiting in the city that still has so much to offer me. The yellow cabs outside are like the red blood cells (or yellow blood cells) that carry the fuel and oxygen needed to make this city at once fun and scary. I hated them for a while, until I started using them to leave the milongas. I haven't forgotten getting into a taxi to take the very same princess back to her castle before going back to my little tent across the river. That was before she let me kiss her, that one weekend. Before she held my hand.
Before coming to McDonald's I ate at the usual Chinese restaurant. Had a $5-noodle soup. While waiting for the soup to come (which took only two minutes), I called my Dad. He sounded happy. He called me the usual way, not with my normal name on the passport. He told me things that are rather mundane but that wasn't the point of the phone call. I asked if he opened the link in the email I sent him. I sent him and my married sister a link to the pianist's website. I tried to explain to him that even though he didn't feel like going anywhere, when that pianist gives a concert, I am going to try to drag him there.
I want to stop being afraid to show to my family the person, at the moment, that's making me happy. For so long, and still so, I am afraid they would be disappointed when things don't work out. They have given up on ever seeing me get married. The point, however, isn't to get their hopes up. It is simply to share my joy with them, to be open with them. And for myself, the point is not to build these imbecilic walls. They only leave bitter resentments against women in the past for having failed to live up to the hopes of two old people they hardly knew.
I didn't tell my Dad much about the pianist, just dropped enough hints that she was someone important. It was good to connect to him.
It is just about time for the pianist to arrive in the cave of dances. I hope I can stay awake. My head is gone so I don't know what I am doing. Without my head, I can still, however, touch. Having her in my arms, just for a few minutes, especially to music we both love, is worth the loss of my head. And even without the head, I can still love this city.
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